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On philosophy as a guide to well-being.

Article Excerpt
Philosophers disagree about whether philosophy can teach us much about human well-being. A long Western tradition, whose roots lie in Plato and Aristotle, holds that philosophical methods, skillfully and wisely deployed, can yield substantive conclusions about what is ultimately worthwhile. For example, according to Aristotle, the best sort of life for a human being will assign a central place to activities that make excellent use of practical reason and the social emotions that are responsive to reason.

One of the distinguishing features of the modern period in philosophy is the abandonment, by some of its most important figures, of that high ambition for moral theory. Thomas Hobbes provides a striking example. In Leviathan, he says: "There is no such finis ultimus, utmost aim, nor summum bonum, greatest good, as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers." His point is that philosophical reflection is powerless to pass judgment on the worth of someone's ultimate aims; they therefore cannot be found defective, except insofar as they might conflict with each other. As he says, "Whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desires, that is it which he for his part calleth good." There is no basis, he thinks, for criticizing "the object of any man's appetites," and so we must let stand that man's designation of that object as good.

The idea that there is no standard for the assessment of ultimate aims--some rational method for deciding which among them are good and which bad--became the orthodoxy of the modern period. "Ultimate ends ... can never ... be accounted for by reason," David Hume says in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Similarly, when in Utilitarianism J. S. Mill asks, "What proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good?" he replies that the only test of a thing's desirability is the fact that it...

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